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Friday, April 21, 2006

PC PV's

*There are many strategies for creating photon to electron devices which can deliver the transduced energy that surrounds us at a price we can afford, in the amounts we will need, in the time we have to deploy them.

First generation photovoltaics, although very proven and very reliable, have production cost issues. There is a lot of energy in a standard silicon solar cell. Besides the energy in the mining and the tranportation of the raw silicon, there is energy that is inputed to control the environment to grow the crystal. There is also the energy in the glass on the cover and in the metal that frames the panel. These costs can be managed, but few see one sun silicon providing more than 5 units of energy for every unit of energy that it took to produce the panel.

Providing more suns on the crystal with less imbedded energy will increase that ratio.

But the exciting field of photon to electronconversion is moving quickly now into second and third generation technologies.

"The combination of better materials, the evolution of thin-film transistor technology, and new production methods is establishing thin-film and organic photovoltaics as a hot area for investment. Recent market forecast and analysis carried out by my firm NanoMarkets LC, indicates that revenues from PV modules that use materials such as thin-film amorphous silicon, CIS/CIGS, cadmium telluride, small molecules, polymers or organic dyes will reach $2.3 billion by 2011.

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Why is thin-film PV taking off now? It has been around for more than a decade and until quite recently its main claim to fame has been as the key enabler for solar powered calculators. Today, however, thin-film is benefiting from a "perfect storm" of market drivers.

Solar power of all kinds is attracting considerable interest, because of high prices and dire predictions for continued reliance on fossil fuels. And thin-film PV is getting particular attention, in part, because it gets around the current shortage of silicon that the traditional PV market is currently experiencing.

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A radically new direction for creating PV is represented by printing. "Printing" in this case, may mean either traditional printing technologies that have been associated with graphics printing for decades or centuries.

Or it may mean ink-jet printing. Not all materials lend themselves to this approach, though. It is particularly associated with organic materials. However, at least one firm is pursuing the goal of a silicon ink. Printing will supposedly bring down the cost of PV in a radical new way, ultimately resulting in orders of magnitude and improvements in cost per watt."

The concept of using an inkjet printer, coupled with software on your PC is exciting. Of course if the cost of the printer cartridge were not prohibitive, it would mean that if accepted, ther would be a revolutionary shift away from not only carbon fuels, but other forms of more rigid photovoltaic technology.